WHO monitoring new coronavirus variant named 'Mu'

Hope they make vaccines for them.

We will learn all the Latin alphabet.

Perhaps the variant from Colombia could be named 'Miu' (Greek alphabet) instead of 'Mu' that may sound as 'Moo'.

Whatever happened to variant Lambda? Did it exist and spread..?

Mu can mean "nothingness" in Japanese.

I guess the J-government will probably not do anything about it.

Nothing to see here move along in Nihongo!

We will learn all the Latin alphabet.

Greek alphabet?

@bokuda

You seem to have a fairly good grasp of the Latin alphabet already. It's your Greek that needs work

Perhaps China can finally release its data from the Wuhan Institute of Virology so we can understand this thing better.

For goodness sake, do they think we are stupid ? Wait and see, this will become worse than all the ones before.

yep, this one can now require triple masking, social distancing of 1 mile and booster shots every weekend.

in case no one has noticed, government will not relinquish any of the power or control that people foolishly and freely gave them.

I’m waiting for ‘Omega’-we can then return to normal…

Mu'll never learn.

Embarrassed to say that this elicited a chuckle from me.

Five variants, including Mu, are to be monitored.

Mu is the sixth letter in the Greek alphabet.

So which variant is not being monitored?

And why?

Let as play around with conspiracy theory a bit. They will now be able to have an excuse for non-working vaccines. Anti-Covid drugs are coming in December. :)

@Cleo - Mu is the 12th letter in the Greek alphabet (13th if you count the archaic letters), so I think they're skipping around when they assign letters to these corona variants.

bokuda

We will learn all the Latin alphabet.

It is the Greek alphabet now. Once they reach Omega, we can speculate which one they go to next. Kyrillic?

@Mirchy

The working number of days to update a vaccine is 100 days. I expect that all variants of interest quite quickly end in pharma labs to create new vaccines and then if/when they are needed it is just a matter of increasing production and training at the various factories in the world.

It will end up like the flu vaccine where there is a best guess and production during the summer months ready for the winter ones. It wont always be successful but we have been coping with flu death fluctations for years. It is in the end just a matter of people getting used to the idea that sars2 is an unavoidable part of life.

At the looks at my supermarket and library it appears to me in my area the old folk have all come out of hiding. Not sure that is because they are all vaxxed and think they are safe or they are just fed up being stuck at home.

So if we know there are strains that are immune to vaccines, why are we forcing the vaccine upon the young and healthy again? Natural immunity would seem to make a lot more sense, but that's just me...

Man, this sux! Humanity just can't catch a break.

Maybe the next time China builds a Great Wall, it'll build it around themselves so nothing can get out.

Maybe the next time China builds a Great Wall, it'll build it around themselves

You're going to lose it when you find out where China built the Great Wall.

@Cleo - Mu is the 12th letter in the Greek alphabet

You're right! Must have been having a senior moment, or maybe not enough coffee today....

So they did alpha, beta, gamma and delta, skipped epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota and kappa, then started in again with lambda and now mu. I wonder what their reasoning is.

Natural immunity would seem to make a lot more sense, but that's just me...

Unfortunately it would appear to be not just you, but could you explain your thinking? It's my understanding that natural immunity is what you get from being infected by and recovering from the disease.

What about those who get infected and do not recover? Or who recover and are left with permanent organ damage? Or who while infected and showing no symptoms walk around obliviously passing it on to more vulnerable friends, family and strangers?

How does simply taking your chances 'make a lot more sense' than taking a vaccine that greatly reduces the risk of death and severe illness?

Greek alphabet ?

Latin alphabet ?

What the heck ?

Hope you don't think romanji is also an alphabet.

Alpha as in a , b , c

not - amo , amas , amat

There appears to be some confusion to "alphabet" .

Well atleast i learned something in British boarding school ha ha .

Cleo,

https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants/

You can find the full list of identified variants, including when and where they were first detected. Not all have been deemed "of interest", but you can see that the full Greek alphabet is being utilized.

did we skip epsilon? aw

Mu: pronounced “Myu” as in “mutation”, not ‘Mu’ like “moo” from a cow.

And, definitely NOT to be pronounced like our blessed Hawaii’s ‘First People’, “Mu”. - We even have a fish called the mu that has what looks like ‘human teeth’. - Some English speakers may call it “a sheepshead”.

Great. That's all we need. ANOTHER variant.

It is the Greek alphabet now. Once they reach Omega, we can speculate which one they go to next. Kyrillic?

Or Kanji?

Variants will continue as the disinformation crowd(read the world is not round) keep on spewing the stupid crap Trump followers keep believing. Remember COVID-19 was a hoax and no worse than the common flu. Inject Hydroxychloroquine! Drink it! But skip the masks and don't worry, it'll be gone when the weather warms up. How many of you Trump lovers fell for that one??? How many of you still are anti vax or find some wrong reasoning to not vax up? I feel bad for the inability to want to critical think and use intelligence in a positive way, but the narrative is wrong.

Even at that time many of us who have studied and understand science knew that virus' mutate and the main reason to try and slow down the spread of the virus was exactly the reasoning it would become a Delta or a Mu variant. From here, it can and probably will get worse. That's how a powerful virus people who know like Fauci and the CDC have been trying to convey with a split crowd, half of whom can't or won't comprehend the severity of COVID-19 until it kills them.

Moo or mew - cows or cats - take your pick.

You mean Japan's Lost Continent of Mu?

Wth is Mu? It’s a M or μ and nothing else. If they cannot handle their chosen Greek letters, they just should let it be.

Mu: pronounced “Myu” as in “mutation”, not ‘Mu’ like “moo” from a cow.

In ancient Greek it was like mü, with the sound of the German ü. English doesn't really have that sound, so we have to make do with a regular u (as in 'moo') or something like 'yu'; neither perfectly matches the original though the 'myu' version introduces a new sound (the 'y' in the middle) whereas the 'moo' version just alters the 'ü'.

Incidentally, the sound has changed in Greek over the centuries and these days Greeks will say the name of the letter like 'mi'.

sunfunbunToday  04:22 pm JST

Variants will continue as the disinformation crowd(read the world is not round) keep on spewing the stupid crap Trump followers keep believing. Remember COVID-19 was a hoax and no worse than the common flu. Inject Hydroxychloroquine! Drink it! But skip the masks and don't worry, it'll be gone when the weather warms up. How many of you Trump lovers fell for that one??? How many of you still are anti vax or find some wrong reasoning to not vax up? I feel bad for the inability to want to critical think and use intelligence in a positive way, but the narrative is wrong.

Even at that time many of us who have studied and understand science knew that virus' mutate and the main reason to try and slow down the spread of the virus was exactly the reasoning it would become a Delta or a Mu variant. From here, it can and probably will get worse. That's how a powerful virus people who know like Fauci and the CDC have been trying to convey with a split crowd, half of whom can't or won't comprehend the severity of COVID-19 until it kills them.

It is comforting to see that there are people who are sensible, curious and who know how to use their brainpower. Please try to enlighten those who walk in obscurantism and denial.

By allowing the delta variant to propagate, the risk of a mutation is very real:

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20210831/k10013233451000.html

WHO monitoring new coronavirus variant named 'Mu'

If "Omega" does not bring on a viral zombie apocalypse I am suing for truth in advertising.

I remember from school that mu (μ) was used as the coefficient of friction. Perhaps more appropriate for comments posted here than the name of a virus.

Thanks WHO for messing up the whole pandemic and sending a mission to China which came back with no credible evidence. MILLIONS of people worldwide have the right to know the origin of the Wuhan virus. And Tedros's visit to Tokyo for the opening ceremony during a raging pandemic shows how incompetent these bureaucrats at WHO are.

Or ‘the invasion’ some are speculating we are being prepped for?

*-@dagon 4:47pm: “If "Omega" does not bring on a viral zombie apocalypse I am suing for truth in advertising” -*

“Corona” was “a crown around a sun”. Now, we have “Mu”, a full “constellation of mutations”? Wonder how this reads for the theorists ‘out there’?

Have to give it to media for the transparency here. In the first days of the rumored lambda in Japan, those posts in the ’daily numbers’ were quickly deleted. Will they be so liberal when mu arrives in Japan?

The lost continent of Mu or lemuria was long before Japan became a country by the way.

Supposedly but i don't know i wasn't there

Corona viruses have been with us every since the human race began, now why all of a sudden we seem to be so concern? is it because COVID - 19 was killing both the rich and the poor?? I think so, if COVID was killing people lets say in Africa, or South east Asia, of any other place where the rich felt safe we probably will never hear about it.

taj - Thank you for that link. Interesting that there are so many variants identified.

All viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19, mutate over time and most mutations have little or no effect on the properties of the virus.

But certain mutations can impact the properties of a virus and influence how easily it spreads, the severity of the disease it causes, and its resistance to vaccines, drugs and other countermeasures.

That's why stop spreading the virus, people

Spreading helps the virus mutate into more variants

The current vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer are effective against the variants.

As mentioned above, the way to 'combat' SARSCoV-2, is by eliminating the virus thru vaccination and protocols such as masks, social distancing, disinfecting and the like. It is also, pertinent to close down the borders to foreign tourists and all other unnecessary travel. Those allowed in for specific rationales, should be completely vaccinated, tested upon arrival & quarantined before interacting on any level with the citizenry.

Mu -

Ah well here we go again another rollercoaster wave of variant cases.

If it has syllables then its not really an alphabet is it .

Speaking of MU i recently read scientific papers on the discovery of the exact same basalt stone found on Moana Kea was also found on Yonaguni and was used as Heaaw trapazoid structure.The chemical compounds of the stone verified it was obtained originally from Moana Kea.

Ancient civilization of MU ?

If your an archaeological enthusiast interested in the region near Taiwan and senkaku islands.

They put a tower where the basalt was found being its the highest point on Yonaguni.

If it has syllables then its not really an alphabet is it .

Erm, you do know where the word ‘alphabet’ comes from, don’t you?

Want to track it for yourself? From Scripps: https://outbreak.info/situation-reports?pango=B.1.621 .

They are going to need a different variant for each geopolitical bloc, and at least one or two new ones a year for everyone.

Classical alphabets won't be enough, so how about naming each variant after a different Klingon.

@Kyo wa heiwa dayo ne

If it has syllables then its not really an alphabet is it .

LOL! How do you pronounce "W", again?

W = double u

Is that also not a letter?

Breaking TV news? Japan’s premier Eikaiwa sensei/comedian/news commentator AND his family have all tested positive for the mu variant. (Please confirm on your own.) “Best Wishes” for a speedy recovery for ALL.